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liiiiiimiiiiiiiitimimii 


VOL.  XII  THE  BULLETIN  NO.  1 

#tatr  Normal  i»rbool 

Halley  (Hitg,  Nnrttj  Hakota 


ART  IN  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 


Entered  at  the  Post  Office,  Valley  City,  N.  Dak.,  as 
second-class  matter,  under  act  of  Congress,  July, 
1894.  Published  Monthly  except  August. 


SEPTEMBER,  1918 


university  of  Illinois 

O-lQig 

Administrative  T . 


A Class  in  Public-School  Art 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL 


3 


ART  IN  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS 

Miss  Mary  G.  Deem,  Head  of  the  Department  of  Public 
School  Art 

One  of  the  greatest  fruits  of  Democracy  is  the  popular 
demand  for  education.  With  freedom  of  action  comes  the 
recognized  need  for  more  light,  more  knowledge  to  enable 
free  action  and  thinking,  to  result  in  the  sort  of  right  living 
that  brings  happiness.  The  demand  that  all  may  have  an 

education,  beginning  in  colonial 
times,  has  produced  a great 
army  of  thinking  men  who  feel 
that  the  bulkwark  of  a free 
form  of  government  is  more 
knowledge  still — but  knowledge 
better  adapted  to  the  needs  of 
the  mass  of  people  who  are  in 
the  tremendous  majority — those 
whose  ways  in  life  must  be  more 
or  less  restricted  by  the  neces- 
sity of  making  a living.  So,  for 
the  past  twenty-five  years  the 
curriculum  of  the  public  schools 
has  been  a most  vital  topic  for 
discussion  and  experiment,  with 
Miss  Deem  the  question  always  foremost 

— “What  subject  matter  shall  be  of  most  worth  to  the  devel- 
oping child.  What  mass  of  facts  shall  he  be  taught,  what 
problems  shall  he  be  given  to  best  fit  him  for  a happy  and 
well-appointed  life?”  Gradually,  slowly,  but  surely  all  the 
old  “studies”  have  been  held  up  to  the  light  of  the  new  de- 
mands and  the  new  psychology,  and  are  being  stripped  of 
their  non-essentials  to  give  place  to  that  material  which 
yields  more  of  mental  development  and  more  stuff  out  of 
which  right  habits  of  life  may  be  adopted.  The  sciences  were 
the  first  to  feel  the  revivifying  of  new  demands.  Gradually 
the  arts,  too,  have  been  subjected  to  rigid  questioning  as  to 
their  right  to  persist  in  the  new  regime.  The  graphic  arts 
under  the  head  of  “Drawing”  have  been  bidden  to  stand  and 
declare  what  they  can  do  to  render  fit  service  in  the  new 
order  of  things. 


4 


THE  MONTHLY  BULLETIN 


In  the  old  days  when  material  was  given  to  the  children 
to  develop  some  faculty,  the  reason  for  teaching  drawing  was 
that  it  developed  the  “faculty  of  observation”  and  that  it 
trained  the  hand.  But  the  results  were  so  meager,  when  the 
high-school  pupil  was  subjected  to  any  test  of  artistry,  that 
thinking  educators  began  to  fear  that  it  was  another  of  those 
useless  fads  that  have  cluttered  the  busy  day  of  the  grade- 
school  pupil.  More  and  more  mere  drawing  as  such 
was  found  wanting,  but  as  a method  of  approach  to  many 
of  the  finest  things  in  the  child’s  life,  it  is  beginning 
to  be  recognized  as  wonderfully  rich  in  that  content. 
In  the  light  of  broader  things  even  the  word  “drawing”  is 
giving  way  to  a better  term,  and  the  more  pretentions  but 
much  richer  nomenclature  of  “Public-School  Art”  is  being 
adopted.  This  dees  not  restrict  tbe  work  to  the  study  of  the 
fine  arts,  merely.  The  fine  arts  have  their  place  in  the  de- 
velopment of  every  well-rounded  life.  They  add  their  full 
quota  to  the  joy  and  fineness  of  living;  and  to  interpret  them 
to  children  and  to  teach  them  not  only  to  enjoy  a work  of  fine 
art,  but  to  adapt  the  ideals  learned  to  daily  life  is  one  of  the 
most  important  in  the  realm  of  education.  The  power  of  ap- 
preciation of  a great  picture  or  a fine  building  is  the  power 
of  being  happy  over  things  outside  of  self,  of  uplift  into  the 
realms  of  ideality,  which  enobles  life. 

APPRECIATION  OF  BEAUTY 

But  perhaps  the  most  practical  form  of  appreciation, 
ministering  most  to  one’s  joy  in  living  is  that  which  opens 
the  windows  of  the  soul  towards  the  beauty  of  the  everyday 
phases  of  nature.  North  Dakota  is  over  arched  by  a sky  of 
wonderous  colors,  so  various  and  changing  as  to  be  a source 
of  constant  joy  to  the  prairie  dweller  whose  appreciation  of 
color  has  been  trained  systematically. 

The  color  sense  is  like  the  “ear  for  music” — it  develops 
by  training.  It  has  often  been  noticed  that  young  people 
have  lived  to  adulthood  on  the  open  prairie  without  any  com- 
prehension of  the  beauties  of  a sunset  sky.  All  their  lives 
this  almost  daily  panorama  of  beauty  had  been  spread 
before  their  eyes.  After  a little  training  the  color 
sense  has  been  developed  until  every  sense  becomes 
a joyful  experience.  The  loveliness  of  the  plowed 
field,  of  the  colorful  wheat,  of  the  varying  strips  of 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL 


5 


color  that  make  up  the  prairie  landscape,  adds  to  the  life  of 
the  farmer  a pleasure  that  by  which  the  practical  joy  of  fin- 
ished work  and  fine  crops  and  good  bank  accounts  is  much 
enhanced.  These  latter  may  be  taken  from  him,  but  noth- 
ing can  deprive  him  of  what  he  has  experienced  each  day  as 
he  worked.  A lad  from  the  art  class  came  back  to  school 
from  a six  weeks’  threshing  experience,  and  was  asked  what 
kind  of  a time  he  had  had.  He  answered  enthusiastically — 
“0  Great!  Everything  was  so  beautiful!  I kept  thinking 
about  it  all  the  time!  The  other  fellows  in  the  crew  thought 
I was  nutty — I talked  so  much  about  how  beautiful  every- 
thing was.  But  after  a while  I got  them  to  see  what  I saw 
too,  and  they  used  to  talk  about  sunsets  every  night.”  One 
cannot  feel  that  his  art  training  was  not  educative,  if  it  added 
so  much  to  his  joy  in  everyday  work. 


s Bust  of  Lincoln 


But  it  does  more.  While 
the  student  is  taught  that 
“a  thing  of  beauty  is  a 
joy  forever,”  he  is  led  to 
see  how  life  may  be  made 
more  interesting  and  or- 
derly if  he  demands  that 
his  surroundings  are  beau- 
tiful 

He  learns  to  distinguish 
between  beautiful  and  un- 
beautiful things.  The 
course  in  design  keeps 
continually  before  his 
mind  the  great  laws  of 
composition  by  which 
works  of  art  from  the 
most  simple  bit  of  house- 
hold furniture  to  the  great 
Parthenon  are  governed. 
He  learns  through  making 
various  designs  to  be  ap- 
plied, the  principles  of  all 


Done  by  Paul  Fjelde.  a student  in  the  decorative  art.  He  learns 
Art  Department  in  1913,  and  Presented  , , 

by  the  Norwegian  People  of  North  respect  tor  Simplicity  and 

Chr^t®ania?inPwi4!e  °f  Norway>  in  honesty  of  line  rather  than 


A Class  in  Pottery  Work  at  the  Normal  School 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL 


7 


over-elaboration  and  profuse  omateness.  He  sees  the  dif- 
ference between  the  fine  and  dignified  and  restrained,  and  the 
ugly  and  pretentious  building. 

HOUSE  PLANNING 

Then  there  is  the  matter  of  this  own  home  upon  which 
rests  the  strength  of  American  democracy,  which  expresses 
the  family  life  that  is  lived  within  the  house,  where  the  ideals 
and  standards  of  living  bring  the  development  of  all  mem- 
bers of  the  family.  How  can  it  be  beautifully  built,  what 
considerations  govern  the  building  of  a beautiful  home — 
cost,  location,  etc.?  He  is  taught  to  plan  the  interior  with 
an  intelligent  thought  for  the  utmost  convenience,  and  com- 
fort, with  the  elimination  of  unnecessary  and  unbeautiful  de- 
tails; and  the  exterior,  with  harmonious  relation  to  his  loca- 
tion, surroundings,  and  to  make  it  a matter  of  beautifully- 
ordered  designs  in  itself.  He  learns  what  to  demand  of  the 
furnishings  of  a home  of  any  sort  so  that  when  he  estab- 
lishes his  home  he  may  do  it  knowingly. 

CIVIC  ART 

He  is  led  to  consider  that  a whole  community  is  en- 
riched by  one  beautiful  home  and  how  essential  community 
interest  in  beautiful  building  is  to  the  aesthetic  welfare  of 
a group  of  people.  The  thought  of  beautifying  private  and 
public  grounds  leads  him  to  some  fundamental  laws  of  good 
planting — landscape  gardening,  and  the  value  of  cooperation 
in  obtaining  these  ends.  He  becomes  familiar  with  public 
enterprise  along  these  lines,  and  establishes  standards  of 
civic  decorative  schemes.  In  our  own  state  nothing  seems 
more  essential  than  that  we  learn,  before  we  go  farther,  to 
build  our  towns  more  attractively.  The  bleakness  and  un- 
attractiveness of  the  average  prairie  town  makes  many  a 
passing  traveler  feel  with  the  famous  George  Kennan  that 
“North  Dakota  is  the  Siberia  of  America.”  A little  more 
artistic  planning  of  buildings,  and  providing  for  planting 
and  parking,  would,  in  a large  measure,  remove  the  im- 
pression of  bleakness  and  poverty,  and  prove  of  tremendous 
economic  value  to  the  state.  And  no  phase  of  public-school 
art  is  more  important  than  this,  that  we  train  children  to 
think  of  their  problems  as  part  of  a larger  community  whole 
which  is  dependent  on  individual  cooperation. 


8 


THE  MONTHLY  BULLETIN 


HOUSE  DECORATION 

Household  decoration  comes  to  take  its  place  with  the 
work  of  the  home  economics  department,  and  to  apply  the 
principles  of  art  to  guide  in  furnishing  a home  which  shall 
produce  an  environment  of  harmony,  of  beauty  of  form,  line, 
and  color.  The  girl  of  today  should  have  a fund  of  infor- 
mation along  these  lines  that  will  make  her  surround  her- 
self and  her  family  with  the  colors  and  forms  that  tend  to 
promote  an  atmosphere  of  refinement  and  well-ordered  living. 
Too  often  the  furnishing  of  a home  has  been  the  result  of 
whimsical  uneducated  taste,  and  the  results  have  not  been 
pleasant.  The  study  of  good  styles  of  historic  furniture,  as 
surely  as  the  study  of  fine  pictures  and  statuary,  is  a study 
of  fine  arts,  and  is  most  helpful  in  establishing  a criterion  of 
good  taste. 

DRESS  DESIGN 

The  subject  of  dress  is  one  of  importance.  Our  garments 
are  not  a meaningless  covering.  They  speak  loudly  for  us  or 
against  us  to  the  most  casual  observer.  Dress  design  is  first 
of  all  an  art  problem  and  not  only  deserves  but  demands  at- 
tention to  itself  in  any  democratic  system  of  art  education. 
Every  woman  ought  to  be  taught  how  to  clothe  herself  so  as 
to  make  herself  more  beautiful,  instead  of  less  so,  and  how 
to  buy  most  economically  to  this  end.  Here  again  the  art 
and  the  home  economics  departments  join  hands.  “Dress 
yourself  beautifully says  Ruskin.  “Also  you  are  to  dress 
as  many  other  people  as  you  can  and  to  teach  them  how  to 
dress,  if  they  do  not  know,  and  to  consider  any  ill-dressed 
woman  or  child  whom  you  see  anywhere  as  a personal  dis- 
grace, and  to  get  at  them  somehow,  until  everybody  is  as 
beautifully  dressed  as  birds.”  This  is  an  exhortation  of  par- 
ticular importance  to  our  students  at  the  Normal  School. 

Again  Ruskin  says:  “Good  taste  is  essentially  a moral 
quality.”  Taste  is  not  only  a part  and  an  index  of  mor- 
ality, it  is  the  only  morality.  The  first,  last  and  closest  trial 
question  to  any  living  creature  is  ‘What  do  you  like?’  And 
the  entire  object  of  education  is  to  make  people  not  merely 
do  the  right  things,  but  enjoy  the  right  things.  What  we 
like  determines  what  we  are,  and  to  teach  taste  is  inevit- 
ably to  form  character.”  This  can  hardly  be  gainsaid,  and, 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL 


9 


judged  from  this  standpoint,  no  department  of  school  work 
is  more  productive  of  educative  results  in  the  largest  sense 
than  that  of  public-school  art. 

THE  MUNSELL  COLOR  SYSTEM 
People  of  all  sorts  are  very  strongly  influenced  by  color, 
but  until  very  recently  nothing  but  the  vaguest  sort  of  gen- 
eralizations regarding  its  best  use  had  been  in  the  hands  of 
the  art  teacher.  Students  were  left  to  their  own  whims  as  to 
its  selection,  and  no  criticism  more  constructive  than  “That's 
good,”  or  “That’s  bad”  has  been  given.  There  seemed  to  be 
no  exact  science  controlling  its  use,  and  art  teachers  every- 
where deplored  the  fact.  Finally,  Mr.  A.  H.  Munsell,  of  the 
Boston  School  of  Technology,  following  up  the  abstruse  work 
of  Helmholtz,  and  Professor  Rood  of  Columbia,  has  given 
what  seemed  to  be  a complete  scientific  development  of  a 
measured  color  system.  It  is  accurate,  easy  to  learn  even 
for  children,  and  of  very  great  value  not  only  for  decorative, 
but  for  pure  art.  It  formulates  certain  principles  and  meas- 
urements by  which  the  correct  use  of  color  may  be  learned  by 
even  the  least  artistic.  So  convenient,  complete,  and  truth- 
ful an  arrangement  of  the  content  of  the  color  sense  is  of 
great  aid,  first,  in  the  observation,  and  thereafter,  in  the  ap- 
preciation of  colors  and  their  harmonies.  It  affords  also  an 
exact  nomenclature  for  color  which  is  being  adopted  by 
leading  manufacturers  of  color  products,  sucn  as  the  Cheney 
Silk  Company  and  others.  Its  final  adoption  for  all  com- 
mercial purposes  seems  only  a matter  of  a short  time,  be- 
cause it  gives  universal  and  accurate  names  for  every  known 
color  used  in  the  trade  world.  “Sky  blue,”  “cerise,”  “taupe,” 
and  all  the  other  color  names  in  common  parlance  are  so  very 
indefinite  and  often  changed.  The  Munsell  color  names  are 
absolutely  definite,  accurate  and  scientific.  Color  work  in 
the  Normal  School  is  based  on  this  system,  and  the  work 
never  fails  to  arouse  the  enthusiastic  interest  of  the  students. 

THE  CROSS  DRAWING  GLASS 
An  invention  of  more  than  usual  importance  has  come 
into  use  in  the  Normal  School  art  classes  as  an  instrument 
for  training  the  eye  to  see  the  eccentricities  of  perspective, 
and  of  light  and  shade  known  as  value.  To  be  able  to  see  cor- 
rectly the  facts  of  proportion  and  foreshortening  is  all  there 


10 


THE  MONTHLY  BULLETIN 


is  to  drawing,  which  depends  on  the  eye,  rather  than  the 
hand.  This  drawing  glass,  the  invention  of  Mr.  Auson  K. 
Cross,  a drawing  teacher  in  one  of  the  great  art  schools  of 
America,  is  really  a device  by  which  any  one  can  teach  him- 
self to  draw  as  well  as  the  professional  artist.  By  it  he  is 
enabled  to  criticize  his  own  work  and  train  his  own  power 
of  seeing.  After  one  term  of  faithful  use  of  the  glass,  the 
students  have  conquered  the  big  difficulties  and  are  able  to 
draw  correctly  and  intelligently. 

The  glass  simplifies  the  teaching  of  drawing  where  it 
has  to  be  done  by  the  small-town  teacher  or  the  rural-school 
teacher  without  the  help  of  a specialist.  With  its  aid  she  is 
able  to  make  sure  the  work  of  the  children  is  right  or  wrong 
and  to  help  them  correct  their  work. 

It  is  a very  simple  device  and  the  wonder  is  that  it  has 
not  been  thought  of  before.  As  it  is  becoming  known,  it  has 
the  endorsement  of  many  of  the  great  educators  and  is  mak- 
ing more  friends  constantly.  It  will  some  day  become  a ne- 
cessity in  every  schoolroom. 

THE  COMPLETE  COURSE 

The  work  in  art  as  it  is  conducted  at  the  State  Normal 
School  is  designed  to  give  students  pursuing  the  elementary 
curricula,  first,  the  power  of  seeking  and  interpreting  the 
beauty  of  the  familiar,  world,  and  a knowledge  of  practical 
aesthetics  and  established  laws  of  good  taste  in  the  appoint- 
ments of  everyday  life;  second,  a practical  knowledge  of 
perspective  and  color. 

Advanced  courses  pursued  in  this  department  give  stu- 
dents the  required  training  to  fit  them  as  special  teachers  and 
supervisors  of  public-school  art.  Such  students  are  offered 
three  terms  of  work  in  the  training  of  the  hand  and  eye, 
three  terms  of  work  in  methods  of  teaching,  and  three  terms 
in  applied  design,  in  addition  to  the  elementary  work.  The 
curriculum  follows: 


STATE  NORMAL  SCHOOL 


11 


First  Year 


Fall 

Psychology  41 
Education  41a 
Art  13 

Manual  Train.  41j 
Art  41 

Physical  Educa- 
tion 41 


Winter 

Psychology  42 
Language  41b 
and 
Art  22 

Manual  Train.  42c 
Art.  42 

Physical  Educa- 
tion 42 


Spring 

Psychology  43 
Science  41a 
Art  23 

Manual  Train.  43c 
Art  43 

Physical  Educa- 
tion 43 


Education  41 
Art  51a 
Art  51d. 
Language  41a 
Teaching 
Thesis 


Second  Year 

Education  42 
Art  52a 
Art  52d 
History  41a 
Teaching 
Thesis 


Education  43 
Art  53a 
Art  53d 

Mathematics  41a 

Teaching 

Thesis 


For  a complete  description  of  each  subject  in  this  cur- 
riculum, as  well  as  other  valuable  and  interesting  informa- 
tion about  the  State  Normal  School  the  prospective  student  is 
urged  to  consult  the  general  catalog,  sent  free  upon  request. 
Address  the  Registrar,  State  Normal  School,  Valley  City, 
North  Dakota. 


3 0112  105658865 


12  THE  MONTHLY  BULLETIN 


WHAT  THE  GOVERNMENT  SAYS  ABOUT  ATTENDING 
SCHOOL  AT  THIS  TIME 

(The  following  statement  is  taken  from  Teachers’  Leaf- 
let No.-  3 of  April,  1918,  published  by  the  Bureau  of  Educa- 
tion of  the  Department  of  the  Interior,  under  the  above  cap- 
tion.) 

“The  entire  spirit  of  the  administration  in 
Washington,  is  and  has  been  from  the  beginning, 
that  the  war  should  in  no  way  be  used  as  an  excuse 
for  giving  the  children  of  the  country  any  less  edu- 
cation, in  quantity  or  quality,  than  they  otherwise 
would  have  had,  but,  on  the  contrary,  that  the 
schools  should  do  everything  possible  to  increase 
their  efficiency,  to  the  end  that  the  children  now  in 
the  schools  may  at  the  conclusion  of  their  course  be 
even  better  qualified  than  ever  before  to  take  up  the 
duties  and  responsibilities  of  life.  Both  the  present 
demands  of  the  war  emergency  and  the  prospective 
demands  of  the  necessary  readjustments  inevitable 
to  follow  emphasize  the  need  of  providing  in  full 
measure  for  the  education  of  all  the  people. 

Boys  and  girls  should  be  urged,  as  a patriotic  duty, 
to  remain  in  school  to  the  completion  of  the  high 
school  course,  and  in  increasing  numbers  to  enter 
upon  college  and  university  courses,  especially  in 
technical  and  scientific  lines,  and  normal  courses  to 
meet  the  great  need  for  trained  men  and  women. 

— Letter  to  Secretary  Lane,  July  20,  1917.) 

Later  the  President  again  expressed  his  “very  urgent 
concern  that  none  of  the  educational  processes  of  the  coun- 
try should  be  interrupted  any  more  than  is  absolutely  un- 
avoidable during  the  war.”  (Jan.  18,  1918,  letter  to  the  De- 
partment of  Superintendence,  N.  E.  A.) 


